It sounds like it's just a widget to get you more screen time with Facebook.

It's hard to imagine anyone buying an HTC phone because of this feature. (It's not hard to swipe on a normal Android phone, or iPhone, then press on the Facebook app.)

This report fits with what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last September: "Android we can go deep on our own, just because there's a lot of hooks in Android that you can use as a developer and we think we can do really interesting stuff around. So, that's the strategy."

Rusli and Efrati say Facebook hopes that once HTC uses the software, others phone makers will give it a shot.

HTC and Facebook have tried doing a phone together in the past. And it flopped. We see a similar outcome for this one.